Seminars

Abstract: Magnetron sputtering is a physical vapor deposition technique for thin film growth, and is the main research interest in our department. As a highly non-equilibrium process it may give rise to metastable phases brought from remote parts of the equilibrium phase diagrams or not present there altogether. We have been gradually increasing the use of transition metal elements in the films, which have the potential of bringing about effects of strong electron correlations. In this talk I will briefly review the various directions of our research into thin films...

The rich chemistry of molecules exhibiting a quinoid structure has attracted the interest of a large scientific community for decades owing to their implications in a wide range of science. More recently, these molecules appeared to be also precusors of choice for on-surface synthesis. Two different approaches and the key role of the quinoidal precursors will be described and discussed in the presentation. The first approach will be devoted to the formation on surface of micrometer-sized materials based on covalent coordination bonds (by a controlled co-deposition process). The second...

Recent interest in functionalised graphene has been motivated by the prospect of creating a two-dimensional semiconductor with a tunable band gap. Various approaches to band gap engineering have been made over the last decade, one of which is chemical functionalisation. In this work, a predictive physical model of the self-assembly of halogenated carbene layers on graphene is suggested. Self-assembly of the adsorbed layer is found to be governed by a combination of the curvature of the graphene sheet, local distortions, as introduced by molecular adsorption, and short-range intermolecular...